Driving Me Crazy
By Beth Mullally

One of the high-water marks in any parent's life is
teaching their children how to drive.
I'm hitting this high-water mark in my own life just
now, and it's pretty much right up there with labor pains
and parent-teacher conferences.
In the week since my boy received his learner's
permit, life has changed for me.

I don't "drive" anywhere now. I "lurch." My boy and
I have been lurching all over town together now for a week
because, he says, there's something wrong with the car.
"Something's wrong with this clutch," he tells me
whenever we lurch to a stall, which is pretty much every
time he tries to get the thing going.

On those occasions when he does get it going, he
generally gets it as far as second gear and then quits
bothering with the gearshift.
"We're picking up some speed," I tell him. "It's time
to shift to third."
But he doesn't want to do that because it just means
he'll eventually have to face the prospect of shifting back
into second.

"Something's wrong with third gear," he says. "I'm
sticking with second."

And so, when we've finally got the car lurched into
motion, we maintain a steady pace by zooming around town in
second gear.

Teaching my boy to drive has made us much closer.
There was a time before he got his learner's permit that he
wasn't that keen on doing some types of things with me,
such as going downtown together to buy a carton of milk.
"Would you like to go downtown to buy a carton of milk
with me?" I'd say, and he'd say, "Well, no. Actually I don't
think that idea appeals to me at all." Getting a carton
of milk with me just wasn't his cup of tea back then.

But now, when I try to sneak out of the house with my
car keys, he can hear them jingle as well as the dogs can.
And suddenly he's standing there in the driveway, anxious
to spend some quality time with me going downtown to buy a
carton of milk. And this means that we're going to be out
in the car together for quite some time.

That's because, not only do we have to go everywhere in
second gear, we can't even get out of the driveway until he makes
a number of time-consuming "adjustments." All student
drivers need to make "adjustments" before they can "go."

They make elaborate adjustments to the seat, for example.
Up. "Too close." Back. "Too far." Up. "Too close."
Back. "Too far." They can spend a good two, three minutes
going up and back, and it never does "feel right."

"Something's wrong with this seat," my boy tells me.
And he spends an inordinate amount of time adjusting
the rearview mirror. My boy's rearview mirror is adjusted
to just exactly the precise specifications they should have
been using when they adjusted the Hubble telescope for
space launch. His rearview mirror is totally, totally adjusted.

Which is somewhat ironic because he never uses it.
I've also been spending a lot of time riding around in
reverse, which is in no way related to using the rearview
mirror. Reverse is different than forward for my boy
because, instead of lurching along, he launches away.

The first time he tried leaving our driveway in
reverse, he went from zero to sixty in 2.5 seconds and
never did stop until he ran into the basketball hoop.

"Something's wrong with reverse," he told me.  And
I've learned to look at the roads around town with a new eye.
I used to just take it for granted that all the roads were pretty
much wide enough for two cars, coming and going. But, by
watching my boy swerve onto the shoulder every time a car comes,
I realize I've had a limited view of things.

"Why did you drive off the road?" I asked him the
first time I noted this habit.  "Something's wrong with that driver,"
he told me. Last night my boy said he thinks he's ready for the
highway.  I told him I didn't think so, at least not until he was
willing to use third and fourth gear. I just can't see how any good
could come of zooming down the highway in second gear.

He was disgusted with my fastidious concern about staying alive.
"Something's wrong with you," he told me.

He's certainly got that right.

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